


Patron Saint Hunter

by leporicide



Series: Fighting Boys [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Denial, Self-Destruction, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:11:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leporicide/pseuds/leporicide
Summary: Keith Kogane catches love in the form of gloved fists, sweat slick skin and a broken tooth.Takashi Shirogane swallows love in the form of fine lines, missing parts and red red shoes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the prequel for Old Sick Boys, but can easily stand alone. Similar to OSB, I plan for this to be 7 chapters in celebration of SheithWeek2k16 (yes I am starting early.) It is really important that you read the warnings for this fic because there are a lot of them [RATING WILL HIT EXPLICIT]:
> 
> ALL WARNINGS:  
> Drug Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, Addiction, Suicidal Thoughts, Self-destruction, Violence, Denial, Implied Child Abuse/Neglect and Crime. (Unbeta'd).
> 
> This is a journey that starts off shaky. But like any fever, it gets worse before it gets better.

It takes three tries for Coran to open the door. The hinges have long since rusted, the wooden frame a mere few attempts from ripping off the walls, plaster peeling off. 

“There we go,” Coran laughs, jingling his keys as he applies all the bodily strength he has to push the door wide, allowing the two of them to enter the gym. It’s as shitty, if not worse, than Shiro remembers. The ring in the center is in pieces, the mat scattered around the outer corners and clumping together on the ground. The lights barely flicker when the switch is hit before nearly shattering above them. The whole thing smells of mold and sickness, just like his father before--

Coran coughs. “The place could definitely use some work. I’m sure your father planned well enough to save it in a,” he pauses, unsure of what to say when dust stumbles into his moustache as he opens the small office in the back room. He sneezes. “A  _ reasonable _ state.”

“He wasn’t much the type for planning ahead,” Shiro jokes, working hard to keep the disgust from digging into his voice and soiling the air between them. He thinks he’s walking over broken glass, the wasteland of a gym and the dead relationship with Mr. Shirogane. 

“Well,” Coran laughs, albeit awkwardly. “The upstairs is in good condition for you to move in. I would recommend getting a new mattress. The furniture is rather old up there.”

Shiro tries not to grimace. “Of course.” The keys exchange hands smoothly, from Coran’s left to the open palm of Shiro’s right. 

“If you need anything,” he says as Shiro gently ushers him out, to cleaner air and natural sunlight. “Please don’t hesitate to call. You know Allura is dying to see you again.”

“I’ll be sure to give her a call once I’m settled in.”

“Splendid!” Shiro hears as he pulls the door closed, watching the wood splinter around the top. It’s going to need to be replaced. He rests his head against it, feels the way loose sharps catch at the soft strands and tug as he lulls his head to the side. Standing there, resting his weight against a collapsing structure, Shiro wonders for the first time of many if this is all there really is. He works for it, develops a sweat in his brow as he reaches the right hand up, spreading the fingers in artificial wonder to brace flat on the wall. He can’t feel the peeling paint, the grime that would fill under his fingernails. Instead, there is nothing but an obstacle stopping him from continuing to push his elbow. 

Shiro stares at the arm, at the sleek connection of wires and the elegant metal molds that hold it all in place. He wants to rip it off and scream, he wants to fight something. He wants to feel the shitty paint under his palm. 

He stands there for a long time, staring blankly at the arm, the flickering lights that tint the small gym yellow and the space between each prosthetic finger. He should have died.

* * *

Shiro makes a run for groceries before his session.

The move-in was relatively easy with only a suitcase to his name and a few fading photos he sometimes deludes himself into thinking he doesn’t care before gingerly tacking them to the wall. He threw the old bed, frame included, into the dumpster in the back. The fridge, after some fiddling, jutted back to life and the oven’s gas worked. He can make due. 

Standing in the middle of the dairy aisle for ten minutes already causes Shiro to deeply regret leaving his new place. The fluorescent light is blinding, hovering over him like a deity as it burns into the back of his neck. He feels hot in this open space, exposed as people walk past him. His eyes keep trying to catch another on him, something like the right arm catching their attention. No one pays him any mind except a clerk roaming the rows of food and only because he’s been staring at the same brand of milk for the last ten minutes. 

He smiles, trying to look pleasant and is given one in return. Maybe he does look normal, like there’s nothing off about him.Shiro quickly picks up the carton and shoves it into his basket before briskly moving away from the teenage worker, his eyes brighter than the lights. 

His next obstacle is deciding how many Kraft Mac and Cheese boxes is reasonable for someone his age to buy. His leather jacket makes it difficult to stretch his hand out to shove the whole shelf into his basket but he manages, if only to startle the woman scanning the food beside him. 

She looks at him warily before finding his eyes and smiling. Shiro smiles in return, this time without the hesitation and the woman glows. Maybe he was getting better at this already. He finishes his shopping run with a case of beer and Camel Reds. 

The cashier keeps giving him a sly look from under her lashes, lips curling into a pleasing expression. Shiro tries to be polite, makes a joke about the weather or something, despite the pitch grey that looms over the town. She laughs anyway as she rings him up, handing him a receipt with a number hastily scrawled on the back. He doesn’t bother checking before throwing it away in the trash as he exits, sure to check that she was looking away at the next customer. 

The walk back to the gym is silent. He takes the backends and alleyways to avoid the blaring sound of cars or chatter. Maybe it’s the weather, he thinks, but he just wants to curl in and sleep. He doesn’t remember anyone from his town and apparently no one remembers him. Or so he thought as he rounds a corner and Haggar is there to greet him.

She’s just the same as Shiro remembers before he sold his body to his country. The pants are tight, almost a thin film, another layer of skin on top of her greying one. Her complexion looks washed out in the minimal lighting, lavender hair falling in strings around her face. Her eyes light up when she sees him.

“Well, well, well,” she sighs, her voice sounding soft and old, feels like nails running down his back unpleasantly, not hard enough to cut, just enough to remind you that they can. “If it isn’t the great Takashi. How did the service treat you?”

Shiro doesn’t want to deal with her rather, he doesn’t want to deal with anyone. He shoots her an unimpressed look. “I don’t remember you living around here.”

“That badly, huh?” She laughs, and it’s ugly and eye-catching, like a car crash or the silence before a bomb. “You look built though. Like a rock.”

“Thanks,” is all he can say as he begins to start moving again, attempting to make his way past her. She quickly stubs her smoke before blocking his escape, her smile the same twist of lips he used to see when he was eighteen. 

“What’s the rush? Is this anyway to treat an old friend?”

Shiro wants to grimace, reminder her of the time she made him take the fall with the police, or the ex boyfriend that nearly beat him to death, or the way she always found a way to offend him even when she was telling him lovely things. 

His silence appears to do the trick for him before Haggar’s smile drops into a frown. “Did they scramble your brains over there?” 

“Haggar,” he warns before her arms are wrapping around him in a faux hug, a mock of actual human connection that makes his skin crawl. He can smell her perfume, sickeningly sweet to the backdrop of gas exhaust. It takes him a moment too long to rip her away.

“Oh, they did mess you up.” She’s giggling, reaching for the right arm with practiced ease. He panics, backs up a couple of steps out her range. “Don’t be shy, I just want to see.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Shiro grits out, ducking from her grasp, fingers wrapping tightly around plastic bag handles. 

“I think the fact that there’s nothing is plenty of reasons to see.” 

Shiro wants to hit her, feels it burn deep in his gut and spread like a cancer in his veins. He wants to hit her square in the nose with the metal hand she wants to stare at so much. He sucks in a breath. “I have an appointment, Haggar.” 

She takes the hint, backing off to the side to leave enough space in the alley for Shiro to worm through. “Don’t be late on my account.” She brushes the hair, long and unmanaged behind her ear as she looks at him the same way the cashier did. “You still have my number right? Don’t be a stranger, Takashi.”

He wants to be estranged. 

“I can give you something to feel better.”

“I’ll pass,” Shiro concludes, squeezing past her but not before her long fingers make a pass at his arm, groping the steel under the thickness of his jacket. Her eyes light up when he wrenches himself free and storms out into the street.

Her laughter follows him home. 

* * *

Shiro is late to his appointment. The secretary still demands he sit in the waiting room, which is as soul crushing as the fact that when he got home and started putting things away, he realized the milk was expired by a couple of days. 

The waiting room is pretty boring. The walls are painted the nondescript beige at manages to damper any mood. The fake potted plant is drooping against the door for support, as if it couldn’t be bothered to stand tall. Maybe the psychiatrist found it as comforting, that even plants need support to go one and that Shiro is no different, just in need of a little encouragement to assimilate back into their small town. 

Shiro isn’t the only one in the waiting room. A boy rests five plastic chairs away from him, arms crossed with a deep sneer embed on his face. His eyebrows are scrunched together in anger, knuckles white where his fingers wrap around his biceps. 

For the first time since he’s come home, something vital missing from him, he realizes he wants to talk. He wants to ask what the guy is here for, wants to know the reason behind the bright red shoes and the frustration. Shiro thinks it’s the first real emotion he’s seen today on someone, no formalities or manners, but blatant rage that echoes in the angry shift of his eyes to meet Shiro. 

He smiles, unsure of himself for the fourth time today. 

The boy, maybe man, narrows his eyes, glaring. Shiro doesn’t really know how to react to that, so he opens his mouth. “Are you here for the two for one deal?”

The question was expected it seems, or maybe the dialogue at all but the man’s expression softens into that of surprise, eyebrows rising up to hide under black bangs. “What?”

“You,” Shiro sticks his thumb out, pointing to the stranger before turning his attention to the plant. “And your depressed plant.”

He doesn’t know what is possessing him to vomit words into a the pleasantly quiet room, the only sound having been the ticking clock that sat on top of a nailed cross by the receptionist.

It takes him a while, Shiro sees the slow dawning of realization spread like wildfire, burning his expression into Shiro’s mind, a portrait he worries that he might not remember tomorrow. 

They sit there in silence, the stranger not knowing how to respond to the sudden, if tasteless joke and Shiro not knowing how to continue. He feels like he’s back in high school, standing in front of the rented theater and giving his graduating speech, only to see his father leave out the door at the mention of--

“That was terrible,” finally splits him from his thoughts, startling him back to the fire. There’s a light melody to his voice, almost too shy to be laughter but it sends shivers down Shiro’s spine, makes the right arm clench and unclench, as if reaching for something neither of them can remember. 

“Yeah,” he laughs awkwardly, and he hates that that’s all he’s been lately: awkward. He rubs the back of his neck. “I never said I was good at jokes.”

“You never said anything, really,” the boy pokes, but there’s a small smile hidden under the taunt, a drastic difference from the raw anger Shiro saw a few mere seconds ago. He likes this tonal shift, wants to see a crescendo before he’s interrupted. 

“Mr. Shirogane,” calls the psychiatrist, poking his head out of the crack of his door, eyes peering into the lonely two in the waiting room.

“Ah,” Shiro sighs, standing up and checking that all his belongings remained in his pocket. “Duty calls.” The stranger wrinkles his nose and Shiro supposes that isn’t a bad expression either before he follows the doctor into his office.

* * *

Unlike the waiting room or his father’s old gym, the psychiatrist's office is spotless. In fact, Shiro can distinctly smell the lemon-scented disinfected that was used to scrub every wooden surface in the small space, which is  _ everything _ . 

The man wastes no time, sitting behind his desk once Shiro has seated and folding his hands in front of himself. “So, Mr. Shirogane--can I call you Takashi?--how have you been faring since your return.”

Shiro watches the way his fingers from together, almost worm-like, moist with the humidity that clings to the air desperately despite it never really raining here. “It feels like I never left,” he responds, forcing his eyes to move up to the doctor’s face, smiling as charming as possible.

The doctor appears the opposite of amused. 

“Do you find yourself having any difficulty adjusting to life with a prosthetic?”

Ugly. Right to the jugular and cutting into his throat. He hopes that if he bled out, it would be all over the lemoned wood. “There’s been no problems.”

“I know you might not take this seriously right now,” the man heaves and hums, pulling his glasses from his face to rest on the desk. “But you must know the dangers veterans face upon returning back. Especially after being honorably discharged after you sustained your injury.” He gestures to the right hand, hidden under his coat. Shiro frowns.

“I understand that this is part of the program but I don’t really find this necessary. I’m still young, you know. I can learn to adapt pretty quickly.”

The man wrinkles his nose and Shiro deems that not pleasant to look at. “Yes, but to counter, you  _ are _ very young.” He ruffles around the pages on his desk, apparently the only mess in the room. “You’re turning 23 in a month.”

Shiro doesn’t like where this is going.

“You might find yourself feeling certain ways you can’t really define. And that’s perfectly healthy. That’s what I’m here for.” 

“Well,” Shiro replies, voice remaining as calm and laidback as his expression, his shoulder’s tension leaving him as he leans back. “I’ll be sure to tell you when I feel something.”

The doctor seems to have missed the point, because he smiles, mirroring Shiro’s relaxed posture. “Please do.”

* * *

The stranger is still waiting there when Shiro exits, chair wobbling on one leg as he rests his head against the wall, black hair spilling like oil. It looks like it would stain the beige paint and that gives Shiro something to look forward to. 

“Mr. Kogane,” the psychiatrist calls from behind Shiro. The stranger’s eyes snap open as he slams the chair back down and gets up. They only glance at each other briefly as they cross paths, the space narrow because this is a government funded building and nothing really matters anymore. Shiro notices that Mr. Kogane’s eyes are startling, a bright splash of color in the unforgivingly bleak background. He wonders if to him, Shiro looks as mediocre as the potted plant, leaning on something because his growth is stunting. 

When he reaches the stairs at the fire escape, standing at the top of the fifth floor and counting the steps down, he makes a decision. The first one of his own really, since he’s moved back into this shithole.

Shiro pushes the emergency doors open with his left hand, as hard as he can to hear the satisfying crack it makes against the brick of the building before bouncing back. Cheap smells of fast food and gasoline meet him fondly and he fishes out his lighter from the depths of his jeans.

It takes two cigarettes and four attempts before Haggar answers the phone.

**Author's Note:**

> laugh at me on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/bogboogie) or have a good time.


End file.
